Unofficial news and tips about Google

August 23, 2007

YouTube Experiments with Video Ads

It was obvious for everyone that Google payed $1.65 billion for YouTube to gain access to a great platform for testing and distributing video ads. The problem is that many YouTube users hate ads and if they had to watch a 15 second commercial before every video, they'd leave YouTube for another video site.

Google's solution, very similar to VideoEgg's ticker ads, is to overlay a small ad at the bottom of a video for about 10 seconds. If you click on the ad, a new video will open in the same player and show you more information about the offer. Once the video ad ends, you can continue to watch your video. The beauty is you can simply ignore the ad, although it takes some time to get used to the small animation.

I have a problem with the in video ads for one reason, and that is that they would disrupt and obstruct content. As an artist who sometimes works with digital video, I realize that the choices made in framing a shot are very important. Everything in the frame at any given moment during a video is important to that video's composition and appeal. For this reason I feel that InVideo ads would be a disruptive and negative addition to the Youtube experience. I would suggest instead that adds could be placed at the end of the video, instead of the rolling related video reels.

The ads are still an experiment and won't be added to user-generated videos.

"For now, Google will place the ads only on video clips of its content partners — the more than 1,000 small and large media companies that have licensed their videos to YouTube. By doing so, YouTube will avoid the potential liability of having ads appear on copyrighted clips it is not authorized to display. And it will also prevent ads from playing on clips generated by users whose message may not be to the liking of advertisers. The revenue from the ads will be split between the media partner and YouTube. Ms. Naughton said Google would charge advertisers $20 for every 1,000 times the ads were displayed. Google said the ads would begin appearing today throughout the site. Ms. Naughton also said advertisers would be able to take aim at specific channels and genres, as well as demographic profiles, geography and hour of the day," reports The New York Times.

You might be able to spot the overlay ads in this video. Here's a short demo from Reuters:

The ads were also spotted last month:

YouTube also added new community features: now you can display on your profile page the latest videos you've rated and the comments have a Digg flavor: you can rate them and see only the top-rated comments.